Smoking: Third Hand Smoke

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Parents who smoke only in garden may still harm children, doctors warn
Parents who limit their smoking to the garden could still be harming their children because of the dangers of ‘third-hand smoke’, doctors have warned.
By Kate Devlin Medical Correspondent
06 Jan 2009
Toxins carried on clothes, hair and skin can still be inhaled and prove harmful to infants and children, they said.
They cautioned that smoking outside or using a fan to clear away smoke will not remove the potentially harmful pollutants clinging to smokers themselves
These can also linger on fabrics and dust in a room after smoke has cleared.
But few parents are aware of the dangers posed, believing only that second-hand smoke can have a serious effect, researchers have said.
They warn that babies and other young children are more susceptible to ‘third-hand smoke’ than adults because their lungs are still developing.
“When you smoke – any place – toxic particulate matter from tobacco smoke gets into your hair and clothing,” said Dr Jonathan Winickoff, from MassGeneral Hospital for Children, in Boston, and an assistant professor of paediatrics at Harvard Medical School, who led the study.
“When you come into contact with your baby, even if you’re not smoking at the time, she comes in contact with those toxins. And if you breastfeed, the toxins will transfer to your baby in your breastmilk.”
“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” he added.
However, he added that breast feeding a baby as a smoker was still preferable to bottle-feeding, because of the natural protection to infection contained in breast milk.
Experts warn that toddlers and small children are especially vulnerable to exposure to third-hand smoke, which can linger for hours, because they are likely to touch or try to eat contaminated surfaces.
Tiny particules of pollutants found in cigarette smoke contain chemicals which in large numbers can cause cancer.
Studies have also shown that even small amounts of exposure to this kind of pollutant has been associated with reading problems in children.
When Dr Winickoff’s team asked parents in America about the danger that it could pose, many underestimated the effects of third-hand smoke.
While 84.1 per cent of smokers agreed that second-hand smoke could harm children’s health just 43 per cent thought third-hand smoke was also dangerous.
Rates of awareness were higher among non-smokers, however.
While 95 per cent agreed that second-hand smoke was harmful, 65.2 agreed that the same was true about third-hand smoke.
Andrew Shennan, from Tommy’s, the baby charity, said that too few people in this country were aware of the potential dangers.
He added: “It is vital that women are made aware of the possible risks associated with third-hand smoke, and alert those around them of the impact it could potentially have.”
The researchers, whose study was published in the journal Paediatrics, called on Governments to do more to make smokers aware of the dangers.
Second-hand smoke, or passive smoking, is caused by being around someone as they smoke and inhaling fumes from their cigarette.

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New Study Warns of Dangers of “Thirdhand” Tobacco Smoke
January 5, 2009
By Michael Siegel, MD, MPH
I question the accuracy and the scientific support behind such a health claim. It’s not clear to me that if a smoker is careful never to smoke inside the home, that merely hanging up their coat on a hook inside the home will cause harm to his children from toxins that offgas from the coat. I just am not aware of any evidence that this represents a significant health risk.
Read More

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January 5, 2009
Rush Limbaugh
Story #2: NYT Warns of New Danger: Third-Hand Smoke
RUSH: The New York Times has warned us in a story two days ago about a new cigarette hazard, third-hand smoke. “Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air for their children, but experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.  That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.”  Third-hand smoke.  “Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term ‘third-hand smoke’ to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children.”
Why not just ban these things?  Why not just ban these?  This is another thing that is patently ridiculous.  This is insane, and yet there will be people left and right throughout this country who will buy this, who will eat it up, who will think that it’s true, just as they thought that oat bran would give them 50 years of extra life, just as they thought that caffeine was going to kill them and give them heart attacks.  They’ll eat this up and they’ll just ban the things. 
You see, all this is is another excuse to tax, to regulate behavior, to create divisions between people.  But they’re never going to be able to make the case in my house, because I have a ventilation system called thermal displacement.  There are no toxins from the cigars I smoke in my house, or that anybody else smokes.  You could come to my house and you could sniff the carpet.  I don’t have carpets.  Rugs.  You could sniff the fabric on the sofa.  It would smell brand-new to you after ten years of cigar puffery because thermal displacement takes it out.  But I didn’t do it to eliminate third-hand smoke dangers to kids, ’cause there was no such reference.  We are in an era where we are all children and cannot do for ourselves anything.  We have to be babied and led along by our parents who are people in think tanks, hospitals, doctors, nurses, and elected officials in Washington.

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Third Hand Smoke
By Dave Hitt on Jan 5, 2009 in Featured, Junk Science, Nanny Nation

The war on smokers proves the axiom “The first casualty of war is the truth.” After the real dangers of primary smoking were publicized a lot of smokers quit, but not enough to satisfy the nicotine nannies, who concocted a new danger: second hand smoke.

Smartenized® people know that SHS is the biggest scam since homeopathy, but it still has been used to harass and vilify smokers and install smoking bans that put thousands of bars, restaurants and bingo halls out of business. Their goal is to force smokers to quit by making it impossible for them to smoke anywhere and to turn them into social pariahs who are hated and feared by the unwashed masses.

The scam has been fairly successful. At one point about half the US population smoked – now less than a quarter of them do. But this is not enough for the Nicotine Nazis – their religious zeal won’t let them rest until they eradicate smoking from the entire planet. Consumed with their self-righteous zeal they’ve now concocted a new scam: Third Hand Smoke.

Years ago people in the smoker’s rights movement joked about third hand smoke. Now, as further proof that our society has become so absurd that satire is nearly impossible, the press is now all abuzz about this new fictitious danger. It started with an article in the once respectable New York Times.

Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, evidently desperate for his fifteen minutes of fame, has published a study that, on first glance, appears to bolster this ridiculous claim. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he says. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”

The article closes with the statement that Third Hand smoke contains polonium-210, “the highly radioactive carcinogen that was used to murder former Russian spy Alexander V. Litvinenko in 2006.” This is yellow journalism at its worst.

Michael McFadden, author of the book Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains sent me some rough calculations about polonium-210. He writes:

“A 30 cig per day smoker gets 1 picocurie per day.

“A typical nonsmoker living or working with smokers would get at most about 1/100th of that per day, more likely only 1/1,000th with good ventilation and/or a more reasonable amount of indoor smoking, so about one femtocurie.

“A child would have to live with a smoker for roughly three trillion days to absorb the dose that killed the Russian.”

And that is for second hand smoke. Since Third Hand Smoke is a fictional construct, we can only base our calculations on assumptions. (These calculations also come from McFadden.) Assuming that 1% of this deadly stuff has been spread on the 10,000 square feet of surface area in a typical 2,000 sq foot house, and also assuming that your method of cleaning is to having your infant lick the kitchen floor clean once a day, the kid would have to lick the floor for one hundred trillion days to accumulate a fatal dose. That comes out to about 274 billion years. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old. The half life of Polonium-210 is a mere 138 days. So in order to ingest a fatal dose, the not only would the floor licker have to keep at it 20 times longer than our universe has existed, we’d also have to completely rewrite the laws of physics to keep the stuff dangerous long enough to do any damage. That wouldn’t even slow down a nicotine nanny, of course – they have quite a bit of experience rewriting the laws of physics.

If the NYT had any ethics they never would have allowed this statement to get past the editor, and would have chastised the writer for including it. Fortunately, ethics and accuracy haven’t been an issue for them for quite some time.

So how did the doctor come up with his proof? Did he visit the homes of smokers and carefully measure particulates on every surface? Did he check out the interior of smoker’s vehicles and measure chemicals on their clothes? Hell no. He did a phone survey to see how many people believe this nonsense. That is the entirety of his research. He had someone call a bunch of people and ask them questions (and we can only guess how loaded these questions were) and presented the results as proof that third hand smoke was deadly. And the New York Times, in their wisdom, published this under a scary headline. Yessir, that there is some real fine and dandy science. Noting wrong what that scientific method, nuh uh.

Of course The Today Show, which is always delighted to jump on any junk science bandwagon, did a story on this. And what a story it was, with computer graphics of a lit cigarette leaving blood-colored stains splattered all over a living room and car interior.

Ignoring the fact that this study was nothing more than a phone survey of uninformed opinions, Dr. Nancy Snyderman expounded on this new scary danger to children. (It’s always for the chilllllllllldreeeeen, isn’t it?) She opened with the fiction, “We know that second hand smoke kills 50,000 people a year.” (Care to Name Three, Nancy?) She went on to say, “Everybody has been on an elevator, and a smoker gets on and you can tell immediately who the smoker is, because you smell those toxins.” You’re not just smelling smoke, you’re smelling toxins. Oooo, scary. “The same stuff that comes out of the tailpipe of a city bus.” She goes on to say, “If you really can’t kick the habit you have to smoke outside. And then I would say guess what? You have to change your clothes. They have to go right into the washing machine, because you are a walking toxic dump.” She didn’t go so far as insisting the smoker then needs to take a shower to wash that deadly stuff off, then call in an decontamination unit to clean up the bathroom, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear some other nicotine nanny make that claim.

MSNBC, who is to journalism what Britney Spears is to music, claims that “Even if you don’t smoke around your children, the study finds that toxins from tobacco smoke can linger in the air, on hair and clothing, long after the cigarette is put out. Those toxins can be easily transferred to a baby or smoke child. Researchers found that even at low levels tobacco particles can be associated with cognitive problems in kids.” (For the chilllllllldreeeeeen!) The study, of course, showed none of these things, but MSNBC has always found that reporting is so much easier when you just make shit up.

There is no end to the fictions nicotine nannies will create to justify their venomous hatred of smokers. This is their latest one, but, but we can be sure there are more to come. Smokers who politely smoke outside, often in inclement weather, to avoid annoying people with second hand smoke, are now horrible evil bags of toxins that will kill your children. And while the idiocy of this will be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain cell, we can be sure that plenty of stupid people will swallow this lie and use it as an excuse to harass smokers even more.

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The 3rd smoke campaign Pfizers started 2 days ago oversea and yesterday in europe:
The aim is… total tobacco prohibition.
As they know that Champix days are already on their count down, they now try to sell it as soon as possible (before this bursts into the whole world and plan the :
It is incredible that we are already in the orwell state and some ppl do not see it. The ame is to force everybody to change for Nicorette, life long,  (and Champix as long as they manage to hide this: http://ismp.org/QuarterWatch/2008Q1.pdf  SPREAD & PUBLISH IT
Well anyway, in each country, the ASH/Pfizer organizations www.ash.org  www.ash.co.ok and all the national subagencies flooded the press agencies and “friendly” papers with following shit:
USA:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/health/research/03smoke.html?_r=2
Germany:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,599431,00.html
Denmark:
http://fpn.dk/liv/krop_valvare/article1560401.ece
Austria:
http://derstandard.at/?id=1231151082392
http://science.orf.at/science/news/153960   Smoking bans in Homes
France:
http://matin.branchez-vous.com/nouvelles/2009/01/une_autre_sorte_de_fumee_secon.html
– A Newsletter Reader

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Third-hand Smoke: Another Reason To Quit Smoking
ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2008) — Need another reason to add “Quit Smoking” to your New Year’s resolutions list? How about the fact that even if you choose to smoke outside of your home or only smoke in your home when your children are not there – thinking that you’re keeping them away from second-hand smoke – you’re still exposing them to toxins? In the January issue of Pediatrics, researchers at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and colleagues across the country describe how tobacco smoke contamination lingers even after a cigarette is extinguished – a phenomenon they define as “third-hand” smoke.
Their study is the first to examine adult attitudes about the health risks to children of third-hand smoke and how those beliefs may relate to rules about smoking in their homes.
“When you smoke – anyplace – toxic particulate matter from tobacco smoke gets into your hair and clothing,” says lead study author, Jonathan Winickoff, MD, MPH, assistant director of the MGHfC Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy. “When you come into contact with your baby, even if you’re not smoking at the time, she comes in contact with those toxins. And if you breastfeed, the toxins will transfer to your baby in your breastmilk.” Winickoff notes that nursing a baby if you’re a smoker is still preferable to bottle-feeding, however.
Particulate matter from tobacco smoke has been proven toxic. According to the National Toxicology Program, these 250 poisonous gases, chemicals, and metals include hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, butane, ammonia, toluene (found in paint thinners), arsenic, lead, chromium (used to make steel), cadmium (used to make batteries), and polonium-210 (highly radioactive carcinogen). Eleven of the compounds are classified as Group 1 carcinogens, the most dangerous.
Small children are especially susceptible to third-hand smoke exposure because they can inhale near, crawl and play on, or touch and mouth contaminated surfaces. Third-hand smoke can remain indoors even long after the smoking has stopped. Similar to low-level lead exposure, low levels of tobacco particulates have been associated with cognitive deficits among children, and the higher the exposure level, the lower the reading score. These findings underscore the possibility that even extremely low levels of these compounds may be neurotoxic and, according to the researchers, justify restricting all smoking in indoor areas inhabited by children.
“The dangers of third-hand smoke are very real,” says Winickoff, who is a professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Richmond Center. “Our goal was to find out if people who were aware of these harmful effects were less likely to smoke inside of their home.”
Winickoff’s team found that this was the case. In a survey of more than 1,500 households, 95.4 percent of nonsmokers versus 84.1 percent of smokers agreed that second-hand smoke harms the health of children, and 65.2 percent of nonsmokers versus 43.3 percent of smokers believed that third-hand smoke harms children. Strict rules prohibiting smoke in the home were more prevalent among nonsmokers – 88.4 percent versus 26.7 percent – but among both smokers and non-smokers, participants who agreed that environmental smoke was harmful to children’s health were more likely to have restrictions on smoking in their homes.
Winickoff’s study shows that increasing awareness of how third-hand smoke harms the health of children may encourage home smoking bans. It also will be important to incorporate knowledge about third-hand smoke contamination into current tobacco control campaigns, programs, and routine clinical practice.
Co-authors of the Pediatrics article are Joan Friebely, EdD, and Cheryl Sherrod, MGHfC Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy; Susanne Tanski, MD, Dartmouth Medical School; Georg Matt, PhD, and Melbourne Hovel, PhD, MPH, San Diego State University; and Robert McMillen, PhD, Mississippi State University. Support for the study includes grants from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute and the National Cancer Institute.
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Adapted from materials provided by Massachusetts General Hospital, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Hugging can expose infants to smoking health risk

August 8, 2006

BABIES can absorb nicotine and other chemicals from cigarettes just by hugging their smoker parents, according to United States researchers.

Scientists also found that infants can be exposed to “third-hand smoke” just from touching furniture and other objects in the home.

Georg Matt, a professor at San Diego State University, found that up to 90 per cent of the nicotine in the smoke adheres to nearby surfaces and early research suggests the chemicals can be swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

The study of 49 babies under 13 months old found a nicotine byproduct cotinine in their urine and hair.

Meanwhile, Scottish researchers yesterday warned that children who suffer from a common gene defect could be at serious risk from passive smoking.

Scientists at Dundee University have discovered that young people with the defect – which is present in about 50 per cent of the population – are twice as likely to suffer from asthma and could also be at risk from developing potentially fatal lung diseases such as bronchitis and emphysema in the longer term.

Dr Somnath Mukhopadhyay said: “What I worry about is people smoking more and more in the home and you could potentially have a vulnerable population who are perhaps getting a higher dose of cigarette smoke.”
Read

8/6/2006
As any parent knows, crawling babies explore the world by touching — and tasting — anything they can get their wet little hands on.

If their parents use tobacco, that curiosity may expose babies to what some doctors are calling “thirdhand” smoke — particles and gases given off by cigarettes that cling to walls, clothes and even hair and skin. Up to 90% of the nicotine in cigarette smoke sticks to nearby surfaces, says Georg Matt, a professor at San Diego State University.

Preliminary research by Matt and others suggests the same chemicals that leave a stale cigarette odor on clothes and upholstery also can be swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin of non-smokers. Smoke residue may linger for hours, days or months, depending on the ventilation and the level of contamination. In some cases, contaminants may need to be removed by rigorously cleaning or replacing wallpaper, rugs and drapes, Matt says.

Matt cautions that his research needs to be confirmed by other studies. But his work suggests that babies may take in nicotine and other chemicals just by hugging their mothers — even if their mothers never light up next to them.

About 43% of children ages 2 months to 11 years live with a smoker, according to research described in Matt’s 2004 study in the journal Tobacco Control.

In his small study of 49 infants under 13 months old, Matt found nicotine in the air and dust throughout smokers’ homes, even when parents smoked only outside. Tests also found a nicotine byproduct, cotinine, in babies’ urine and inside shafts of their hair.

As expected, babies whose parents smoked around them had the highest cotinine levels — nearly 50 times higher than the babies of non-smokers, according to the study.

Smokers who tried to shield their infants had only partial success, Matt says. The babies of parents who smoked only outside had cotinine levels seven times higher than in the infants of non-smokers, the study showed.

Adults also may be exposed to significant smoke residue if they rent cars, hotel rooms or apartments that have soaked up years of smoke, Matt says. He worries more about youngsters, however, because they may be exposed day and night for years.

Children also may be at greater risk because they breathe faster than adults and inhale more chemicals, says Jonathan Winickoff, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Crawling babies may take in chemicals through their skin.

Though scientists have extensive evidence about the damage caused by secondhand smoke, they know relatively little about the potential risks of thirdhand exposure, says Brett Singer, a scientist at California’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. “The million-dollar question is: How dangerous is this?” Singer says. “We can’t say for sure this is a health hazard.”

Matt agrees that doctors should study children — ideally for 10 or 15 years or more — to see whether low levels of smoke residue worsen asthma or harm the development of a child’s lungs.

The Hazards of a Smoke-Free Environment

by Robert W. Tracinski

An epidemic of local smoking bans has spread across the nation–in 25 states from Arizona to Maine to Oregon–under the pretense of protecting people from the alleged threat of “second-hand” smoke. But the bans themselves are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved–the cancer of unlimited government power.

The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: if it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions–or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the “right” decision?

Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than attempting to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the tobacco bans are the unwanted intrusion. Loudly billed as measures that only affect “public places,” they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops, and offices–places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don’t like the smoke.

Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is obviously negligible, such as outdoor public parks. The decision to smoke, or to avoid “second-hand” smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks.

This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on. All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbors. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free, because his life belongs to him–not to his neighbors–and only his own judgment can guide him through it.

Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Cigarette smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behavior. That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favorite restaurant.

The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke–while they unleash the systematic and unlimited intrusion of government into our lives. The tobacco bans are just part of one prong of this assault.

Traditionally, the political Right has attempted to override the individual’s judgment on spiritual matters: outlawing certain sexual practices, trying to ban sex and violence in entertainment, discouraging divorce.

While the Left is nominally opposed to this trend–denouncing attempts to “legislate morality” and crusading for the toleration of “alternative lifestyles”–they seek to override the individual’s judgment on material matters: imposing controls on business and profit-making, regulating advertising and campaign finance, and now legislating healthy behavior.

But the difference is only one of emphasis; the underlying premise is still anti-freedom and anti-individual-judgment. The tobacco bans bulldoze all the barriers to intrusive regulation, establishing the precedent that the rights of the individual can be violated whenever the local city council decides that the “public good” demands it.

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Robert Tracinski is a senior editor at the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org/medialink ) in Irvine, Calif.

THE BEST OR WORST OF TERRY’S TIDBITS – SMOKING IN HOMES.

October, 2004
By Terry Gray

Ever since fanatic anti-smoking groups began their nonsense, they have assured us all that they do not want to eradicate tobacco or come into our homes. Those fighting the bans called them liars and justifiably so. They have lied about most everything else when pursuing their oppressive legislation, and freedom fighters have seen their ilk before. We know these fanatics.

I’ve told you why they don’t want to kill tobacco; they make too much money from it. But when it comes to legislating where one may smoke, they are all over the place. The Ontario Medical Association now says, “The OMA is recommending government turn its attention to raising awareness around the issue and, possibly, instituting a ban on smoking in any homes, vehicles or facilities that offer childcare services.”

This isn’t about smoking around kids, however. This is about smoking in homes where kids live or visit and cars in which kids ride, even if kids aren’t present when someone is smoking. “The reason, (sic) is that cigarettes release gaseous chemicals in smoke that condense on surfaces, and are then re-released later.”

Tobacco smoke is magical, don’t you know? It lies in wait in the form of a solid and then suddenly turns to gas when kids are around and pounces on them. That sounds like a fool’s mission. Since tobacco smoke is so crafty, it would seem that while in the gaseous state it would fly around seeking out children rather lying dormant and waiting for children to come to it.

The OMA is talking about home businesses for the most part and, for right now, only those home businesses that serve children. However, this is just another brick in the oppression highway.

“This report will lead the way in taking action against SHS in spaces that children should feel safe and protected,” said Dr. John Rapin, President of the OMA.” Coming soon to a home near you.

Cigarette smoke doesn’t just get on surfaces in buildings; it also gets on smokers’ clothes. We smokers are walking arsenals of tobacco toxins. Our lungs serve as conveyors of death, and our clothes are like the bandages of lepers. Egads!

Those “No Smoking” signs that you see plastered all over everything may very likely change to “No Smokers” if the nannies have their way. “Smokers’ elevator in the rear.” “Smokers must report immediately to the biohazard room for detox before being admitted to other areas of this building.” “No valet service for smokers, sorry.”

I smoke, and there is a brownish film on my car windows when I’m cleaning them. There is no doubt in my mind that the film is solidified tobacco smoke. In the hopes of getting rid of this film, I invited some kids to go for a ride with me. I expected to hear some evil sound like that of a demon awakening while the solid poison altered itself to a gaseous state and attacked. However, it was very anti-climatic. The film didn’t move, the kids didn’t cough, and I’m stuck with a bottle of Windex and a shop rag. I thought I was on to something.

I would like to point out that the OMA does not provide any hard statistical data. They do acknowledge various “studies” but they provide no details. Further, all the studies that they do cite are studies that have been funded by other nannies, like – Louis Gleeson; Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco (OCAT), Michael Perly; (OCAT), Ontario Medical Association, Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, Conference on Tobacco and Health, Physicians for a Tobacco-Free Canada, EPA, and Stan Glantz. Glantz has admitted that he has filed falsified reports. Go figure.

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Or Is It All Just Smoke & Mirrors?

4/19/2003
John Boston “Mr. SCV”

“Mr. Howard Saxby, literary agent, was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting.”
    — P.G. Wodehouse
   
    The Surgeon General’s office today released a controversial 1,346-page report outlining the dangers of third-hand smoke.
    “We have decades of well-documented evidence on the dangers of smoking,” announced Health Department spokesman Moe Gadeeshu at a Washington press conference. “The costs in health care, missed work and shorter life spans is horrendously high. Just recently, we discovered the dangers of just being in the same room with a smoker and labeled that as second-hand smoke. Now, it is a historic day in American health care. We have pinpointed yet another smoke-related disease: THS.”
    According to the World Health Organization, which co-authored the study, Third-Hand Smoke, or, THS, is a malady that strikes 99 out of 100 people daily.
    “Due to several decades of political correctness and an egocentric sensitivity bordering on the pathological,” Gadeeshu noted, “just the very mentioning of cigarettes, smoke, smoking or people who smoke can cause increased risk of depression, anxiety, heart attack and sexual dysfunction.”
    “I was having lunch at one of those outdoor restaurants in Santa Monica,” said Sarah Tonin, who was recently diagnosed with THSS (Third Hand Smoke Syndrome). “It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue. You could feel the good vibes from the ocean. Then some darn idiot from the next table over started talking about dating this girl who smoked. Pretty soon, the currents were blowing his conversation toward my ears and it was really upsetting. I mean, I’m sitting there eating and I can actually picture this woman there, in my mind, smoking. I undertipped and left in a huff.”
    Tonin claimed the exposure to third-hand smoke upset her so she was unable to return to the San Fernando Valley chlorine factory where she worked. She is under doctor’s care and is currently suing a range of defendants.
    “My client was leading a rich, fulfilling life prior to suffering the agony of hearing about somebody smoking,” said famed and rather shrill trial attorney, Holly Peño. “There is a giant octopus of a conspiracy eager to do harm here.”
    Peño believes this conspiracy begins with the tobacco companies and trickles all the way down to the city of Santa Monica for granting a license to the restaurant where Tonin overheard the emotionally troubling conversation.
    “Besides the obvious corporate and governmental villains here,” Peño said, “we’ll be also going after the guy sitting next to her talking about smoking down to the pediatrician who brought the insensitive lout into the world.”
    Peño said she has served papers to over 1,100 institutions, companies and individuals for lawsuits totaling over $12 trillion.
    “With my third of the settlement, I’m buying Arizona and kicking out the men,” grinned a happy Peño.
    Tonin isn’t the only victim of THS.
    In hospitals, psychiatric wards and clinics across America, more and more people exhibiting  symptoms of this new disease are being admitted.
    “Last weekend, my waiting room was filled with people from West Hollywood, all with the same, curious expression,” said Dr. Lou Goubrious, respiratory specialist. “They were all holding their breaths and looking as if they were imagining smelling something bad. Smoke, I’m guessing. Most were worried that they were just one generation away from contamination. I mean, if second-hand smoke kills, why not third-hand? We’ve had a lot of over-insured needlessly fragile people drop by.”
    Third Hand Smoke has given rise to several interesting questions. Are we somehow manufacturing more diseases or just becoming more adept in our hypochondria? Has the movement to become more sensitive caused Americans to morph into the vanguard of a new species: homo sapien sissyius?
    That very question was asked at a health symposium in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, before there was an answer, a militant anti-Third-Hand Smoke group calling themselves the WCE (Words Cause Emphysema) drowned out any answer by angrily blowing whistles.
    Perhaps the people who believe in the dangers of Third Hand Smoke have something.
    Recently, in a small clinic in Florida, the United States suffered its first case of FHSS, or, Fourth-Hand Smoke Syndrome. Someone was sitting next to someone who was thinking about someone else smoking.
        John Boston’s Mr. Santa Clarita Valley column appears Wednesday through Saturday. To reach Boston, dial 259-1234, ext. 242.

Households contaminated by environmental tobacco smoke: sources of infant exposures

G E Matt1, P J E Quintana2, M F Hovell2, J T Bernert3, S Song3, N Novianti2, T Juarez2, J Floro1, C Gehrman4, M Garcia1 and S Larson5
1 Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA
2 Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University
3 US Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
4 SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, San Diego
5 San Diego State University Foundation, WIC Program, San Diego

Correspondence to:
G E Matt
PhD, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-4611, USA; gmatt@sciences.sdsu.edu

Objectives: To examine (1) whether dust and surfaces in households of smokers are contaminated with environmental tobacco smoke (ETS); (2) whether smoking parents can protect their infants by smoking outside and away from the infant; and (3) whether contaminated dust, surfaces, and air contribute to ETS exposure in infants.

Design: Quasi-experiment comparing three types of households with infants: (1) non-smokers who believe they have protected their children from ETS; (2) smokers who believe they have protected their children from ETS; (3) smokers who expose their children to ETS.

Setting: Homes of smokers and non-smokers.

Participants: Smoking and non-smoking mothers and their infants 1 year.

Main outcome measures: ETS contamination as measured by nicotine in household dust, indoor air, and household surfaces. ETS exposure as measured by cotinine levels in infant urine.

Results: ETS contamination and ETS exposure were 5–7 times higher in households of smokers trying to protect their infants by smoking outdoors than in households of non-smokers. ETS contamination and exposure were 3–8 times higher in households of smokers who exposed their infants to ETS by smoking indoors than in households of smokers trying to protect their children by smoking outdoors.

Conclusions: Dust and surfaces in homes of smokers are contaminated with ETS. Infants of smokers are at risk of ETS exposure in their homes through dust, surfaces, and air. Smoking outside the home and away from the infant reduces but does not completely protect a smoker’s home from ETS contamination and a smoker’s infant from ETS exposure.